The Yalta Conference was unique. The week...
where the Great Depression started. Though American economic might was only slightly less than that of Britain, the U.S. was an isolationist state with no Great Power aspirations. The task of dividing the world with Britain and the Soviet Union caught it somewhat unawares at Yalta.America emerged as a Great Power not at Yalta, but rather soon afterwards, when the circumspect FDR was no more and when Washington obtained something that was only in the making in Roosevelt"s time. This was The Bomb. The first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, and another two were detonated, this time on humans in Japan, on August 6 and 8. That was when it occurred to Americans that they had made a bad bargain in Yalta. What did they care about the Big Three, and what did Britain matter after America now had the A-bomb, which no one else had? The Americans first realized this during the presidency of Harry S. Truman, an outstanding man who combined daring vision with a cool head.
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